“Opened this week, this monster of a modern fortress designed by Berger Devine Yaeger , has been described by at least one US commentator as the ‘imperial mother ship dropping into Baghdad.’ It could, I suppose, be seen as a latter-day, Wild East-version of a 7th Cavalry fort, with the Iraqis playing the role of Native Americans.
Tag: 01.09.09
Vegas Crime Museum – Should Obama’s Stimulus Program Help Pay For It?
Budget hawks have “attacked the museum this week as a kind of localized earmark project that does not belong in legislation Congress passes to jumpstart the flailing economy.” Las Vegas boosters say the museum is exactly the kind of project that should be funded in a stimulus program.
Art Market Reverts To The Pros
“With most of the happy-clappy amateurs driven away from the auction arena by the financial panic, the game is back in the hands of those who buy art in full knowledge. Prices have dropped by 20 or 30 percent in categories where speculation was manifest, and will go further down, but outstanding objects are holding up at every level.”
“Capital Of Culture”. Can It Really Transform A City?
“Can culture really perform miracles as the credit economy disintegrates? There is surely a real risk that a faith in the arts as agents of change, which has become universal among urban planners since Barcelona’s Olympics-inspired success, is founded on air, or on the same postmodern delusion that everything is possible which has fuelled the current economic madness. In Britain, with our huge investment in our cultural image, this is especially worrying.”
Soprano Deborah Riedel, 50
“[She] was a schoolteacher before successfully auditioning for a place in the Australian Opera chorus in 1983. Her career included many of the great parts in the repertoire, including Violetta in La Traviata, Donna Anna in Don Giovanni and Tosca… at such leading theatres as the Bastille in Paris, the Metropolitan in New York and the Vienna State Opera.”